Western Allied invasion of Germany

• 1. Strategic Context And Objectives

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  By early 1945, events favored the Allied forces in Europe. On the Western Front, the Allies had been fighting in Germany with campaigns against the Siegfried Line since the Battle of Aachen, the Battle of Metz and the Battle of Hürtgen Forest in late 1944. By January 1945, they had pushed the Germans back to their starting points during the Battle of the Bulge. The failure of this offensive exhausted Germany's strategic reserve, leaving it ill-prepared to resist the final Allied campaigns in Europe. Additional losses in the Rhineland further weakened the German Army, leaving shattered remnants of units to defend the east bank of the Rhine. On the 7th of March, the Allies seized the intact bridge across the Rhine at Remagen, and established a large bridgehead on the river's east bank. During Operation Lumberjack, Operation Plunder and Operation Undertone, German casualties during February, March 1945 are estimated at 400,000 men, including 280,000 men captured as prisoners of war. On the Eastern Front, the Soviet Red Army had taken most of Poland, launched an offensive into East Prussia and began their invasion into Eastern Germany in February 1945. By March, they were within striking distance of Berlin. These rapid advances on the Eastern Front destroyed additional veteran German combat units and severely limited German Führer Adolf Hitler's ability to reinforce his Rhine defenses. With the Soviets at the door of Berlin, the western Allies decided any attempt on their behalf to push that far east would be too costly, concentrating instead on mopping up resistance in the west German cities.

• 2. Allied Order Of Battle

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  At the very beginning of 1945, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force on the Western Front, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, had 73 divisions under his command in North-western Europe. Forty-nine of these divisions were American, 12 British, eight French, three Canadian and one Polish. Another seven American divisions arrived during February, along with the British 5th Infantry Division and I Canadian Corps. As the invasion of Germany commenced, Eisenhower had a total of 90 full-strength divisions under his command, with the number of armored divisions now reaching 25. The Allied front along the Rhine stretched from the river's mouth at the North Sea in the Netherlands to the Swiss border in the south. The Allied forces along this line were organized into three army groups. In the north, from the North Sea to a point about north of Cologne, was the 21st Army Group commanded by Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery. Within 21st Army Group the Canadian First Army held the left flank of the Allied line, with the British Second Army in the center and the U.S. 9th Army to the south. Holding the middle of the Allied line from the 9th Army's right flank to a point about south of Mainz was the 12th Army Group under the command of Lieutenant General Omar Bradley. Bradley had three American armies, the U.S. 1st Army on the left, the U.S. 3rd Army on the right, and the U.S. 15th Army. Completing the Allied line to the Swiss border was the 6th Army Group commanded by Lieutenant General Jacob L. Devers, with the U.S. 7th Army in the north and the French 1st Army on the Allied right.

• 3. German Defensive Collapse

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  Facing the Allies was Oberbefehlshaber West commanded by Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, who had taken over from Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt on the 10th of March. Although Kesselring brought an outstanding track record as a defensive strategist with him from the Italian campaign, he did not have the resources to make a coherent defense. During the fighting west of the Rhine up to March 1945, the German Army on the Western Front had been reduced to a strength of only 26 divisions, organized into three army groups. Little or no reinforcement was forthcoming as the OKW continued to concentrate most forces against the Soviets. It was estimated that the Germans had 214 divisions on the Eastern Front in April. On the 21st of March, Army Group H headquarters became Oberbefehlshaber Nordwest commanded by Ernst Busch leaving the former Army Group H commander Johannes Blaskowitz to lead Army Command Netherlands cut off in the Netherlands. Busch's main unit was the German 1st Parachute Army, which was to form the right-wing of the German defenses. In the center of the front, defending the Ruhr, Kesselring had Field Marshal Walther Model commanding Army Group B and in the south Paul Hausser's Army Group G. The Wehrmacht suffered such severe defeats on both the Eastern and Western Fronts that it could barely manage to mount effective delaying actions, much less muster enough troops to establish a well-organized alpine resistance force.

• 4. Crossing The Rhine Campaign

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  On the 22nd of March, with a bright moon lighting the late-night sky, elements of U.S. XII Corps' 5th Infantry Division began the 3rd Army's Rhine crossing. At Nierstein assault troops did not meet any resistance. As the first boats reached the east bank, seven startled Germans surrendered and then paddled themselves unescorted to the west bank to be placed in custody. Upstream at Oppenheim, however, the effort did not proceed so casually. The first wave of boats was halfway across when the Germans began pouring machine-gun fire into their midst. An intense exchange of fire lasted for about thirty minutes as assault boats kept pushing across the river. Finally, the Germans surrendered, and by midnight units moved out laterally to consolidate the crossing sites. By midafternoon on the 23rd of March, all three regiments of the 5th Infantry Division were in the bridgehead, and an attached regiment from the 90th Infantry Division was crossing. Tanks and tank destroyers had been ferried across all morning, and by evening a Treadway bridge was open to traffic. Plunder began on the evening of the 23rd of March with the assault elements of the British 2nd Army massed against three main crossing sites: Rees in the north, Xanten in the center, and Wesel in the south. The initial assault waves crossed the river quickly, meeting only light opposition. Meanwhile, Operation Widgeon began north of Wesel as the 2nd Army's 1st Commando Brigade slipped across the river and waited within one mile of the city while it was demolished by one thousand tons of bombs delivered by RAF Bomber Command.

• 5. The Ruhr Pocket Encirclement

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  On the 4th of April, when the trap closed around the Germans in the Ruhr, their fate was sealed. In a matter of days, they would all be killed or captured. On the 4th of April, the day it shifted to Bradley's control, the 9th Army began its attack south toward the Ruhr River. In the south, the 1st Army's III Corps launched its strike on the 5th and the XVIII Airborne Corps joined in on the 6th, both pushing generally northward. German resistance, initially rather determined, dwindled rapidly. By the 13th of April, the 9th Army had cleared the northern part of the pocket, while elements of the XVIII Airborne Corps' 8th Infantry Division reached the southern bank of the Ruhr, splitting the southern section of the pocket in two. Thousands of prisoners were being taken every day; from 16 to the 18th of April, when all opposition ended and the remnants of German Army Group B formally surrendered, German troops had been surrendering in droves throughout the region. Army Group B commander Model committed suicide on the 21st of April. The final tally of prisoners taken in the Ruhr reached 325,000, far beyond anything the Americans had anticipated. Tactical commanders hastily enclosed huge open fields with barbed wire creating makeshift prisoner of war camps, where the inmates awaited the end of the war and their chance to return home.

• 6. Advance To The Elbe River

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  On the 4th of April, as it paused to allow the rest of the 12th U.S. Army Group to catch up, the 3rd Army made two notable discoveries. Near the town of Merkers, elements of the 90th Infantry Division found a sealed salt mine containing a large portion of the German national treasure. The hoard included vast quantities of German paper currency, stacks of priceless paintings, piles of looted gold and silver jewelry and household objects, and an estimated $250,000,000 worth of gold bars and coins of various nations. But the other discovery made by the 3rd Army on the 4th of April horrified and angered those who saw it. When the 4th Armored Division and elements of the 89th Infantry Division captured the small town of Ohrdruf, they found the first concentration camp taken by the Western Allies. By the 9th of April, both the 9th and 1st Armies had seized bridgeheads over the Leine, prompting Bradley to order an unrestricted eastward advance. On the morning of the 10th of April, the 12th U.S. Army Group's drive to the Elbe began in earnest. By the evening of the 11th of April, elements of the 9th Army's 2nd Armored Division had dashed to reach the Elbe southeast of Magdeburg, just short of the German capital. On the 12th of April, additional 9th Army elements attained the Elbe and by the next day were on the opposite bank hopefully awaiting permission to drive on to Berlin.

• 7. Final Operations And Surrender

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  At 11:30 on the 25th of April, a small patrol from the 69th Infantry Division met a lone Soviet horseman in the village of Leckwitz. Several other patrols from the 69th had similar encounters later that day, and on the 26th of April the division commander, Maj. Gen. Emil F. Reinhardt, met Maj. Gen. Vladimir Rusakov of the Soviet 58th Guards Rifle Division at Torgau in the first official link-up ceremony. the 25th of April is known as Elbe Day. On the 30th of April, elements of 7th Army's XV and XXI Corps captured Munich, south of the Danube, while the first elements of its VI Corps had already entered Austria two days earlier. On the 4th of May, the 3rd Army's V Corps and XII Corps advanced into Czechoslovakia, and units of the VI Corps met elements of Lieutenant General Lucian Truscott's U.S. 5th Army on the Italian frontier, linking the European and Mediterranean Theaters. Also on the 4th of May, after a shift in inter-army boundaries that placed Salzburg in the 7th Army sector, that city surrendered to elements of the XV Corps. The XV Corps also captured Berchtesgaden, the town that would have been Hitler's command post in the National Redoubt. With all passes to the Alps now sealed, however, there would be no final redoubt in Austria or anywhere else. In a few days the war in Europe would be over.